Rhode Island jack-o'-lantern fest lights up fall nights

Some of the pumpkins bear intricate carvings depicting scenes from movies, celebrities, superheroes and even dog breeds.

DAVID KLEPPER

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — John Reckner, gourd slayer, has waded through gallons of pulp. Seen his hands run orange from the guts of a thousand pumpkins. Spent hours carving a masterpiece, only to watch it rot. It's a sticky business, carving pumpkins.

But the creator of Providence's Jack-o'-lantern Spectacular says the oohs and ahs he hears from children and adults make putting on one of the nation's largest jack-o'-lantern shows worth all the work.

"If you told me 25 years ago I'd still be doing this I wouldn't think it possible," said Reckner, a retired postal worker who got the idea for the Spectacular 25 years ago when his family visited a smaller pumpkin festival in Vermont. "The people of Providence have really supported us, and they make this special every year."

The display at the Roger Williams Park Zoo features 5,000 lit pumpkins along the zoo's wetlands trail. Some bear intricate carvings depicting scenes from movies, celebrities, superheroes and even dog breeds. Others grin eerily through the fog, hung from tree limbs, or suspended over the surface of the zoo's pond.

Some are works of art: a pumpkin portraying Neil Armstrong shows the astronaut in great detail, with the rocky lunar surface behind him. A pumpkin showing a famous scene from Casablanca looks like a photograph. Reckner said about 40 carvers in all work on the pumpkins over the course of five or six weeks. Some are professional illustrators who from come from as far as Hawaii.

This is the eighth year the zoo has held the event, which attracted more than 100,000 visitors last year.

"What blows my mind is that they must be constantly carving pumpkins to replace the ones that go bad," said Charles DeMailly, of Mattapoisett, Mass., who visited the event with his family last week.

In all, 20,000 pumpkins are used, weighing in at a quarter of a million pounds. Most are grown in Connecticut, though the big ones come from Amish farms in Pennsylvania and the giants are grown locally. To avoid creating a smelly mess, the pumpkins are replaced several times throughout the show.

The work yields hundreds of thousands of pounds of pulp that goes into the zoo's massive compost pile.

With so many pumpkins, accidents are bound to happen. The big pumpkins — some with walls a foot thick — can collapse as carvers sit inside scooping out pulp. The little ones can break. Reckner recalls a particularly painful loss: a pumpkin that depicted a Norman Rockwell painting broke after 20 hours of work.

"We dropped it," he said. "There's always a few fatalities."

One carver had an allergic reaction while cleaning out a pumpkin, Reckner said.

"He was at the hospital yesterday," he said. "It goes with the job."

The effort shows, according to Chuck Kennedy of Smithfield, R.I., who visited the Spectacular last week with his girlfriend, Jen Conti. Kennedy said he enjoys carving pumpkins himself, and was particularly proud of one he did last year that depicted the comic book and movie character Iron Man. Then he saw an Iron Man pumpkin at the Spectacular.

"I got shown up," he said with a shrug. "But I got some new ideas."

Sue Rioux brought her three children — ages six, 14 and 13 — to the event. The Plymouth, Mass., woman said she'll be back next year.

"It's great for the kids," she said. "It's about making Halloween memories."

The event is sponsored by Citizens Bank. Proceeds go the zoo. Tickets for the event start at $10 for adults and $8 for children 12 and under. The event is open daily from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. and midnight on Saturdays. It runs through Nov. 4.

Reckner, 66, said he will hang up his carving knife someday. But despite all the orange goop he's scooped, he still enjoys a slice of pumpkin pie.